


A Joyful Rebellion

by ObsidianMichi



Series: Solas and Eirwen Shorts [5]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Romance, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 11:03:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2770673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObsidianMichi/pseuds/ObsidianMichi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Solas has been hearing Inquisitor Eirwen Lavellan cursing in the hallways. He's finally gotten his courage up to ask why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Joyful Rebellion

**Disclaimer:** The characters and property belong to Bioware. I can only lay claim to the order of words and Eirwen Lavellan's personality.

 **Warning** : Mild Swearing

He could always hear her coming, knew when she was close. Not in the way Master Tethras might have described it in one of his serials. It was not romantic. There were no starbursts behind his eyes, no rapid escalation of the beating heart within his chest, no quickening breath, no expectant shiver spreading across his skin. After all, he was no maiden experiencing her first blush at the approach of a prospective beloved. No tether tied them together except for the faint glimmer of his magic emanating from her hand, the place where his foci had touched her. He could not use it to track her movements, nor did he wish to.

Sound, not magic, was how he knew.

Of all those within Skyhold, her manner of walking was unique. When she came, the halls echoed with clumsy clopping of fine soles on stone. Her quiet pacing movements caught in the awkward footfalls of feet unused to being bound within shoes. They were a concession. A diplomatic gesture to Josephine and Cassandra that, for their sake, she would adopt human customs as a representative of the Inquisition, as their Herald of Andraste.

“Creators preserve me!” She spat, her words dancing in the air just beyond the wooden planks on the other side of the door. The exclamation was followed by a sudden loud bang as a door flew open. Stumbling followed. Echoed curses bounced in the hallway leading toward the ramparts. Each sudden breath releasing another and yet another in a long string of elvish. “Ar tu na’din. Sahlin Cullen na’din emma. Ma emma harel.”

A small smile crooking his mouth, Solas picked up another tome and moved it across his desk. In another, he might have taken those curses as a sign of anger or he would need to talk her down before the Commander awoke with his hair on fire. Eirwen Lavellan’s threats, he’d learned, for all their severity were simply her version of good natured grumbling. Away from Clan and Keeper, she seemed to take some small pleasure in being as vulgar as possible.

“Fenedhis!”

 _Only when she believes no one can hear her,_ he thought. Flipping the tome open, he smoothed the first page down with a long finger. Another in Genitivi’s exploration of the Fade. Most of it was anecdotal, more blatant misinformation and Chantry propaganda. Still, the possibility of a might be made exploration relevant. _Even if it is only to find another source necessary to explain what I already know._ Or else, Eirwen Lavellan’s curiosity would be the death of him.

“Shit!” Deep and throaty, said in a flat voice, the words rolled off the tongue. “No shit! Nug shit!”

Solas felt his smile widen and forced his eyes back to the page.

“Shite!” Cried joyfully, mimicking of Sera’s high pitched tone. “Shiii- _te_.”

Had Clan Lavellan been strict? She toyed with and tested curses on her tongue, played with the words like one new to them. Teasing them out, emphasizing different syllables in order to find a better way to communicate their meaning. All the while expressing childlike pleasure in the dirtier aspects of language.

“Shite! Shut down your pesky shitter, you skull shattering pretty prig. I’ll grip you…” a pause then an exclamation, “by your short hairs!”

 _It is almost as if she is trying to find lyrical symmetry. All the different manners in which a word might take its shape._ The vast majority of it was nonsensical, sounds slammed together purely for the pleasure of hearing them.

Chewing the inside of his cheek, Solas returned the page. Unlike Sera, the Iron Bull, and even Master Tethras, Lavellan did not insert her curses to take up space or because she could. Outside of these brief moments inside the hallway where few were likely to hear, he’d never heard her swear. Never a curse, not even in Elvish the one language in which she might keep degree of some privacy. Yet, when she was on her way from Cullen’s tower to the throne room, Lavellan built her vulgarity into a fascinating journey of understanding. Words expelled clumsily were spat with gusto, then with careful reverence and followed up by angry indignation. She built her curses into tongue twisters, winding rapidly in their turns until she could fire them out faster than of Master Tethras’ shots with Bianca.

“Maker’s breath, ma halam! May Andraste’s tits set fire to your flaming ass!”

Often, the lyrics designed to trip up the tongue were repeated until they came out in the exact tone she wanted. Until they balance perfectly on that clever tongue. He leaned back in his chair. Memory of their kiss in the fade tripped through his memory, the taste of her lips on his. The touch of his tongue sliding over hers, warm and wet. He swallowed, rubbing his hand across his mouth. Yes, if memory served, she was in possession of a particularly clever tongue.

 _She shares her curses by accident. Not in a gesture of trust._ He knew that. The doors between the corridors were thick and heavy. The wood and wind muffled all noise. A dying man could scream inside that hall and never be heard. Still, he enjoyed listening to her work out her frustrations. _The day I no longer hear them will be a sad one._

Another pause. Then, silence.

_She is finished._

Calmly, he tried to memorize the first few lines on the page and waited. A few moments later, he heard the latch click. The hinges on the door to his study gave a great creak, swinging forward.

He swallowed again and pretended not to notice, not until she spoke to him first.

“Dry reading?”

Solas lifted his head.

Eirwen leaned against the door. One arm lifted high above her head and a box tucked under the other, she watched him with bright blue eyes.

“Easily the driest I have read this evening,” he replied and allowed himself a slight smile, one small hint of approval.

A snort followed, a tired sort of sound that caught in the base of her throat. She moved into the room, one careful step after another. A cautious gaze moved over his. Dropping to his collar, her eyes traced the line of his throat before sliding down to his fingers and the book. “If it’s Genetivi’s Explorations of a Somniari then it must be.” Setting the box on the floor, she sank into the seat across from him. Her right leg hooked across her left thigh. One hand rose to hide a massive yawn. “Dorian suggested it, didn’t he?”

Inclining his head, Solas turned the page. “You have read it.” He’d made an observation, did not ask a question. A question would be unnecessary. She took every advantage of Skyhold’s increasingly vast repository of knowledge to increase her own.

“I think so.” She smiled. “It was lost somewhere in between Mortenheim’s Treatise of Nobility, the Canticle of a Circle Mage, and Nennia’s Collected Heraldy of Orlesian Houses.”

“Ah.” He swallowed. His eyes searched her. Red-orange hair swept off a wide brow over arched eyebrows and large blue eyes. Her complexion normally tanned was ruddy from the cold. Beneath it, she was pale.

Eirwen slumped back into the chair. Then, straightened, shifted on the seat, pulled her shoulders back, and corrected her posture.

Calmly, he picked up his cup of tea. _The First Enchanter’s influence._ Josephine was more content to allow their Herald to escape unscathed when it came to following the rules of courtly etiquette. “Lethallan?” He leaned forward. “Are you well?”

An orange eyebrow rose over a blue eye. “Of course, Hahren.” Another faint smile brushed across her mouth, hiding in the corners of her lips. Her palm scrubbed against her left cheek. Leaving red lines beneath the deep jagged scar cutting above and below her eye. He did not know the story behind it, yet it always caught him. “Why shouldn’t I be?”

He let his eyes drop. Allowed his voice to sound smoothly unconcerned. “You sounded angry in the corridor,” he said. “For a moment, I believed you were plotting the Commander’s murder.”

“Oh.” Lavellan ducked her head, fingers scraping across her scalp. Short hair brushed back across her skull before flopping back onto her forehead. A sheepish smile tugged at her mouth. “You heard me.”

“I always hear you, Da’len.” He smiled. “You are difficult to miss.”

Her eyes dropped to her lap and she uncrossed her legs, tucking them up to her chest as she hugged her knees. “I’m sorry if I disturbed you, Solas.” The words lingered in the air, smaller than before. Her body crowded against the chair’s back and, for a moment, she reminded him of a child.

 _Yes, Da’len. Little Child._ He attempted to fix this image in his mind, it would make it easier to avoid the others and then more erotic thoughts like the ones lingering on the edges of his dreams would become unpalatable. “I am not offended, Lethallan. Instead, I find myself curious.”

“Oh,” she said. “I could tell you, but, well, it’s stupid and you’ll think I’m stupid.” 

He leaned forward. “You are many things," he said, "but I do not believe you are a fool.”

The orange eyebrow cocked above her eye, her chin lifted, her lips quirked into a wry expression of disbelief. “You don’t, huh?”

“Only once. When you attempted to sacrifice yourself at Haven.”

“And when I fall off cliffs.”

“I would appreciate it if you were more aware of your surroundings, Da’len,” he replied. “It is a wonder you were still alive when we met.”

She laughed. “That’s a surprisingly good question. Was I alive when we met?”

“Only just,” he said. “And I believe you have attempted to undo all my efforts every day since.”

“Oh, my ankles,” she sighed. “Varric says I won’t have them when I’m thirty.”

“You are attempting to distract me, Inquisitor,” Solas said. “It will not work.”

She sat up, unwinding on the chair. Her feet touched the ground and she leaned onto the table. “So,” she said. “We’re back to Inquisitor?”

“Yes.” He flattened his hands on the table and lifted his eyes slyly to her face. “Until you capitulate.”

Eirwen sighed. “You have more important things to do than listen to my stupid stories.”

His hand moved over the tome on the table. “More foolish than this?”

Her smile widened. “Point taken, Hahren.” Arms crossed over her chest, a defensive gesture, she leaned back into the chair. “The swearing is… ma mien’harel nehn. My joyful rebellion.”

She was silent for a moment and he waited. Sometimes, the words came slowly. With Lavellan, personal information could be difficult to come by. The stories she shared freely were the most meaningless. It was easy to think one knew her on their first encounter. If she had not so consistently continued to surprise him, Solas knew he would have suffered the same fate.

“You know I came into my magic when I was young, long before the others began to learn the Vir Tanadhal. The Keeper took me from my parents to become her apprentice. At the time, there was grumbling about my appropriateness for the position. My mother, a hunter for our clan, had taken a lover among the city elves of Wycome and stayed with him. She had abandoned them, abandoned me.” Eirwen looked away, her eyes on the stones. Sadness touched her gaze, her hands knotting beneath the table. “I was left alone and the Keeper… she took me in. There were members of our clan who felt so honored a position deserved to go to one of less flighty blood.”

Reaching out, Solas offered her his hand. “Ir abelas, Da’len.”

A faint smile touched Eirwen’s mouth, curving at the corner. A secret hid there. “There is no need, Hahren. It was for the best.” She slid her hand into his and allowed their fingers to interlock, answering his gesture of compassion with warm acceptance.

 _A lover’s knot,_ he thought. The irony could not be clearer.

She exhaled, air squeezing from her throat in a steady crawl. “I learned our history, I studied the ancient secrets kept in trust by my clan. In time, I became respected.” Turning her head, blue eyes flashing in the candlelight, Eirwen studied the wall. “It is a Keeper’s place to remember, to guide, and to protect.” Her gaze clouded, normally clear her beautiful eyes grew stormy, and her fingers clenched around his hand in a tight grip. “I accepted my role, Hahren,” she said. “It was my duty to settle disputes among the Clan, to judge fairly and wisely as much as it was to aid and teach. When given such a task, it was easy to forget my sorrows. I threw myself into my studies. I became what they needed me to be.”

“Ah,” he said. It was difficult to hide his disapproval.

Her eyes fell. “In a mirror, we see ourselves reflected. That is how I built myself, to be a mirror so that when they looked at me each clan member might see his or herself in my eyes. I shared their sorrows and their joys.” Her mouth twisted. “A sympathetic ear in times of trouble, capable of offering subtle guidance and saying what was needed.” Her eyes swung to the table, to his hand. “Never what I might if I were honest. My true self, the real Eirwen, she’s locked behind the glass. Trapped in the mirror. Occasionally, I have to let her out.”

Solas swallowed. His thumb brushing across the back of her hand. This story was perhaps too close for comfort. Calmly, he studied her. “Why, Da’len?”

“Why must I let her out? Or why do I keep her in?” 

He sighed.

She smiled. “A role does not require a person, Hahren. My wants and desires will only get in the way. An empty vessel seeks to be filled. If I am empty then others will poor their hopes into me so that I might carry them safely. They are free.”

“You could not have lived that way forever.”

“That’s true.” She laughed. “Wear the mask too long and you risk becoming it. So, in time, I looked for a way to release myself and that was how my joyful rebellion was born.”

“Wise of you,” he murmured.

“Only if there is wisdom in doing what is necessary, Lethallin.”

“A truly wise man can do little else.”

Her mouth quirked. “Am I a man now?”

“No,” he said. “You are a beautiful woman.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Beautiful?”

He lifted his hand to cover a smile. “You are fishing, Da’len. Continue, please.”

She shook her head, orange bangs falling across her forehead. Rubbing her nose, she glanced up at him through fluttering eyelashes. “You’ll want to hold back the praise until you hear the rest.” On her free hand, her right index finger tapped on the table. Pensive, she hung back against the chair. “On one of our journeys past Wycome, we found an ancient shrine. The carved wolves, black and white, marked it as Fen’harel’s but it was older than any we’d ever encountered.” She sighed. “Predictably, most of the clan wanted to avoid it.”

“Ah,” he murmured. “Yes. One must always flee the dreaded wolf.”

“May he never catch your scent,” Eirwen replied.

He might have flinched, but her tone was wry. Spoken like a joke offered to him and not a warding prayer.

“At the time, I was being pursued very… insistently by one of our hunters, Fenalil.”

His eyebrows rose, his fingers tightening around her had. “Insistently?”

“Insistently.” She nodded. “The Keeper felt this was good opportunity for me to take a break from the clan while she worked to discourage him. I had the necessary knowledge to explore ancient ruins alone and no member of the clan wanted to stay within ten leagues of the shrine.”

His grip hardened, squeezing. “You were being pursued and your Keeper believed sending you alone to that shrine was the answer? Was she mad?”

Those trusting eyes of hers lifted, fierce baby blues gazing up at him with a mischievous twinkle. “Not as mad as one might think. Fenalil was very superstitious. Ever since he was a child, he had lived in terror of the Dread Wolf. He believed Fen’harel stalked him in his dreams.”

How ironic, he thought, that a place reviled by his modern kin would become her sanctuary in a time of need. “Ah, I understand. While he might have pursued you within the bounds of your camp, he would not take advantage while you were alone in a place he feared.”

“I had an escort take me there,” she said. “The Keeper wasn’t a fool, Hahren. We both knew that if Fenalil did overcome his fear and if she failed, then the two of us would be alone in the forest. I’m a mage and hardly defenseless, if he troubled me then I was free to act as I wouldn’t have been within the Clan.”

“Fascinating,” he said. “I was not expecting the Dalish to offer such a practical solution.”

“My people are more sensible than they might seem at first glance, Solas.” She turned her head. “Anyway, when I reached the shrine and found myself alone for the first time… that was when the cursing began.”

“I find it difficult to imagine what the shrine might have done to offend you.”

Her lips pulled sideways. “You laugh now,” she muttered. “Just wait until it’s your name on the chopping block.”

“Your wrath is truly terrible, Da’len,” he said dryly.

“And don’t you forget it,” she said. Then, she sighed and looked away. “At the time, I was terrible. I cursed Fen’harel, myself, the grass, the sky for being blue, the birds overhead for their happy songs, Fenalil and my foolish clan, even the Keeper. Everything I wanted to say, every angry hateful thing came tumbling out.” She paused. “There was no one around to hear me, not for several leagues. The only one who could was the Trickster and I’m sure he appreciated the irony.”

“If who or what existed, I am sure he would.”

“I didn’t mean half of it.” She glanced at him, wide blue eyes sorrowful. “I don’t really mean any of it. I just… need to let it out from time to time. Everything I’m not supposed to say, where no one can be hurt by it. Then, I can face them again.” A small smile touched her mouth. “Now you’ve heard my pitiful tale, you think I’m stupid.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I merely regret there was no one in your clan you felt you could turn to.” He swallowed, his mouth dry. You must have been so lonely. Glancing at her face, from the high forehead to the round cheeks and full lips always ready to offer a joking smile. As you are still. He had asked her to share the story, she had not come to him seeking to ease her lonely burden. I cannot fault her for that, I do not ask the same. He did not share his burdens, he sought to keep her at arms length. There she would be safe from the inevitable heartbreak that he was sure to bring into her life.

“At first, I felt two-faced, like I was harellan, a false friend. I told myself I would stop, but I kept going back. After a while, it became a habit.” She waved her free hand. “Skyhold and the Inquisition? They’re like the Clan, but bigger in scale. Different rules with the same needs. They need me to be more than I am, a symbol onto which they can place their hopes, their fears, and their dreams.” She sighed. “And I cannot run into the woods alone to rail against the heavens like I used to. I keep slipping deeper into the mask, until one day I think I may vanish completely.”

“That will not happen,” Solas said. It came out fiercer than he had expected.

Scrubbing her nose, she chuckled. “Thank you, Lethallin. I curse so often now, I’m running out of words.”

“In that, I may be of assistance,” he said. “I have discovered many ancient cultures in my explorations of the Fade and encountered a great many languages.” He lifted her hand and turned it over, his thumb sliding across her palm. “If you like, we could work on expanding your vocabulary.”

There it was, an invitation offered before he could stop himself.

The corners of her mouth twitched. Sly eyes fluttered up at him through thick lashes. “Are you offering to be my Dread Wolf, Solas?”

It took everything he had not to flinch. _I cannot fault her for her ignorance._ He could not blame her for not knowing. How could he? When he asked for honesty, he returned her gift with hypocrisy. _Tread cautiously._ If he drove her away in this moment, she would not come back. It would be kinder. Yet, he could not bring himself to. _I will not even try._ Not if it denied him some small joy in teaching her curses lost to the ages, listening as she twisted them to suit her. He wanted to see how she would preserve them and change them. He wanted to hear that clever tongue play with the language of his people.

He wrinkled his nose. “I should think my ability to respond to stimulus and offer insight would put me ahead of any shrine.”

“Oh?” Her eyebrow arched. “Do you think so?”

“I am merely waiting for the opportunity to provide proof.”

She giggled. Then, she tilted her head and he watched her tongue dart across her lower lip. “I think,” Eirwen said slowly, “I’d enjoy that.”

He basked in the warmth of her smile, her laughter as comforting as sunlight drifting across a pond on a cool summer’s day. _Ar lath ma vhenan. You are my heart._ The words he must never say.

“As will I, Lethallan,” Solas replied. “As will I.”

**Author's Note:**

> I admit it. I enjoy writing Eirwen as a goofball. She's a little ray of sunshine and she's much more intelligent than she might appear to be at first glance. I like to think so anyway. She and Solas are both dorks. Sweet, funny dorks. The cliff joke comes from... well, my propensity to fall of cliffs in game.
> 
> This story takes place after their first dream kiss but before the second one on Lavellan's balcony.
> 
> Elvish Translation:  
> One of these I made up, so it’s not exactly right.  
> Ar tu na’din – I will kill you  
> Sahlin Cullen na’din emma – now (In this moment) Cullen will kill me  
> Ma emma harel - You should fear me  
> Fenedhis – a curse, probably like “fuck”  
> Ma halam – You are finished  
> Ar lath ma vhenan – you are my heart  
> Da’len – little child  
> Hahren – honored elder  
> Lethallin/Lethallan – casual reference used for someone who is familiar, a cousin or clansmen, indicating they see each other as family-ish.


End file.
